Pathways to Resilience IV: Global South Perspectives

Using a resilience lens in collaborative realist evaluation: what supports role resilience and supportive relationships at the early career phase.
Presenter: Angie Hart (University of Brighton, UK,)
Co-Author: Caroline Hudson, Dr Suna Eryigit-Madzwamuse,
Introduction:  This study reports on a collaborative realist evaluation of role resilience and supportive relationships in which co-researchers, namely Newly qualified (NQ) nurses (preceptees) and experienced nurses (preceptors) joined separate co-inquiry groups. The aim of the study was to better ‘the odds’ for NQ and preceptors in future preceptorship experiences.
Methods:  The initial programme theory emerges inductively from the NQ and preceptor co-inquiry discourse, including 10 NQ and 5 preceptors. Examination of contextual effectiveness is presented in a first phase of ‘theory gleaning’ (Manzano 2016) from co-researchers explanatory accounts of their preceptorship experiences. This includes: i) the adversity, ii) overcoming adversity iii) the conditions that shape role resilience, their ‘resilient moves’ and iv) aspirations for preceptorship, from both groups of NQ and preceptors. Validity of the qualitative data was scrutinised by the co-researchers, in an iterative process to realise contextual adversity, enabling mechanisms, actual and ‘potential mechanisms of action.’
Findings:  Using a social justice resilience approach during data collection highlighte and identified not only, ‘what works, for whom and under what conditions,’ (Pawson & Tilley 2004:2) but their change orientation. Using a resilience lens in realist evaluation moves beyond traditional realist methods to elicit mechanisms that may otherwise have remained dormant.